Snapple

Snapple is a brand of tea and juice drinks which is owned by Dr Pepper Snapple Group and based in Plano, Texas. The company (and brand), which was originally known as Unadulterated Food Products, was founded in 1972. The brand achieved some fame due to various pop-culture references including television shows.

Unadulterated Food Products was one of the first companies in the United States to manufacture juices and other beverages made from natural ingredients.[2]

An early apple juice product led to the company's name, Snapple.[2] Golden, Greenberg and Marsh had created a carbonatedapple juice.[2] Unfortunately, one of the batches of apple juice fermented in the bottle, causing the bottle caps to fly off.[2] The original name of that particular apple juice product, "Snapple," which derived from the words "snappy" and "apple," became the new name for their beverage company, the Snapple Beverage Corporation, beginning in the early 1980s.[2][3] "In 1980, the company introduced a line of all-natural juices with the Snapple name, which came from one of its first products, a carbonated apple juice that had a "snappy apple taste." Snapple first started with pure fruit drinks, and would not manufacture their first tea, lemon tea, until 1987.[4]

Snapple was known for a popular series of TV advertisements in the early 1990s featuring Wendy Kaufman (the "Snapple Lady") answering letters from Snapple fans.[5] In an effort to counteract the Coke and Pepsi challenge commercials, Snapple began running a new line of advertisements in May 1992, which featured its trademark “made from the best stuff on earth” line in ads that spoofed earlier beer and sports drinks promotions; the ads received low marks from advertising industry observers.In addition, the company used its $15-million-a-year advertising budget to pay for a long-lived series of live radio commercials featuring controversial disk jockeys Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. At the end of the summer of 1992, Snapple conducted a five-week search for a new advertising agency that could better convey its corporate identity in preparation for a wider national push. Later that year, Snapple also signed tennis player Jennifer Capriati to endorse its products. By August 1992, Snapple had expanded its distribution to every major city in the United States and it signed new contracts with beverage distributors. The company owned no manufacturing facilities, but instead made agreements with more than 30 bottlers across the country. In this way, Snapple was able to keep its overhead low and its payroll short. The company administration consisted of just 80 employees, 50 of whom worked out of a modest office building on Long Island.[6]

The Quaker Oats Company bought Snapple for $1.7 billion in 1994.[7] The company ran into problems and sold it to Triarc in 1997 for $300 million.[8] Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion in September 2000.[9] It was spun off in May 2008 to its current owners.

Old Snapple bottles and logo were used from 2000-2008

Starting in May 2009, Snapple was made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. However, in certain areas, the older formula is still sold in stores, but this is becoming increasingly rare.

In 2009, a consumer lawsuit was brought against Snapple. The suit alleges that the manufacturer's marketing use of the words "all natural" is fraudulent because the drink is made with corn syrup.[10] However, Snapple retaliated by arguing that their "Orangeade" flavor contained real chunks of oranges. The complaint also raises the issue of Snapple drink names including fruits when the products do not contain those fruits.[11]

Snapple was able to acquire the contract in part because New York City officials did not want to encourage the consumption of sodas, which have been linked to childhood obesity, diabetes and are generally considered unhealthy. The Snapple juice drinks, specifically created to meet rules banning soda and other sugary snacks from city schools, are marketed under the "Snapple 100% Juiced!" label.[12] The flavors available under this brand include Green Apple, Fruit Punch, Melon Berry, Grape, Orange Mango, and Strawberry Lime.[12] Although the juice drinks are fortified with vitamins and minerals, they still contain more sugar (41 grams) than a 12-ounce container of Coca-Cola (39 grams).[12]

The deal also gave Snapple exclusive rights to sell its tea and juice-based drinks in vending machines on all New York City properties starting in January 2004. Snapple paid the City $106 million for the rights and agreed to spend $60 million more to marketing and promotion over the length of the five-year contract.[13]

In the early 1990s the original label graphic on the Iced Tea flavor, a depiction of the United States historical event the Boston Tea Party was replaced due to misinformation espoused by misguided protest groups claiming the ships on the packaging were slave trading vessels in New York Harbor.

Snapple also fell victim to the old rumor that the small "K" was either a representation of the Klan, or of an imagined "Jewish Tax" (augmented by the fact that all three founders were Jewish). The "K" on the products actually meant that they were certified kosher.

Snapple initially tried to quell these rumors quietly, but ultimately had to launch a media campaign to squash them, pointing out it would be bad for business to support controversial issues in such a way as the rumors implied. Through a media campaign with the NAACP, Snapple successfully fought back these rumors, although occasionally they are still brought up as fact.[14][15]

Several of the facts on Snapple caps have been found to be outdated, incorrect or exaggerated. Discredited "Real Facts" include:

#31 "The average human will eat an average of eight spiders a year while asleep." This "statistic" was disseminated in 1993 as an example of the things people will believe simply because they come across them on the internet, as uncovered by Snopes.[18]

#36 "A duck's quack does not echo." Tested by Snopes and MythBusters. Both tests concluded that a duck's quack does echo but is hard to distinguish.[19]

#69 "Caller ID is illegal in California." There is no law against Caller ID in the state, though there were lengthy debates about making it illegal in the early 1990s.[20]

#77 "No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times." This myth was proven wrong by Britney Gallivan in 2002 when she managed 12 folds. In 2005, drawing on Gallivan's accomplishment, MythBusters folded a piece of paper 11 times. The piece of paper used in Mythbusters was an oversized piece of paper that was thinner than a standard 8.5"x11" piece of paper.[21]

#114 "The oldest known animal was a tortoise, which lived to be 152 years old." A tortoise named Harriet once lived to be 175 years old.[23]

#116 "The largest fish is the whale shark - it can be over 50 feet long and weigh 2 tons." Full-grown whale sharks do not weigh 2 tons (4,000 lbs or 1,820 kg), but are much heavier, weighing up to 16 tons (32,000 lbs or 14,550 kg).[24]

#146 "The smallest county in America is New York County, better known as Manhattan."—Although Manhattan has a smaller land area, its total area (including water area) is larger than Arlington County, Virginia which in total area (as it has no water area) is the smallest county in America.

#162 "The temperature of the sun can reach up to 15 million degrees Fahrenheit." In fact, the core of the sun reaches 15 million degrees Celsius, about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.[28]

#163 "The first penny had the motto "Mind your own business."" The coin held the message "Mind Your Business" which, along with the image above it, formed a rebus meaning, time flies, do your work.

#744 "Polar bears can smell a seal from 20 miles away". According to Sea World, this distance is a much lower limit of about 1 km (0.6 miles).

#761 "Owls are one of the only birds that can see the color blue". In fact, birds have excellent color vision, with some being able to see even into the UV spectrum.

#764 "The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers." This is technically correct, but misleading as it implies that only the muzzles of lions can be used for identification. In fact, muzzle pattern is a dermatoglyphic trait that’s unique to every animal with a muzzle and is sometimes used for identification purposes.[29]

#769 "If a sheep and a goat mate the offspring is called a geep." A geep is produced by combining the embryos of a sheep and a goat. If they mate, the offspring is called a sheep-goat hybrid.

#794 "Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental United States, and Zabriskien [sic] Point, the lowest point in the United States, are less than eighty miles apart." It is true that Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, but Badwater in Death Valley, not Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, is the lowest point in the United States.[30]

#825 "Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing." The average newborn’s eyeball is 16 to 18 millimeters in diameter (axial length). In an infant, the eye grows slightly to approximately 19½ millimeters. The eye continues to grow, gradually, to a length of about 24-25 millimeters in adulthood.[31]

#853 "Hawaii has its own time zone" Hawaii shares a time zone with the Aleutian Islands.

#868 "Thomas Jefferson invented the coat hanger." Claims that Thomas Jefferson invented the clothes hanger are unfounded according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.[32]

#889 "The original Cinderella was Egyptian and wore fur slippers." It is true that Rhodopis is considered the oldest telling of the Cinderella story, but her slippers are consistently described as rose-gold. Some claim that Charles Perrault's classic French telling featured fur slippers, and that vair (fur) was mistranslated as verre (glass), but this is believed to be an urban legend.[33]

#904 "If done perfectly, any Rubik's Cube combination can be solved in 17 turns." In fact, it has been shown that there exists a starting position for Rubik's Cube that requires 20 turns to solve; furthermore 20 has also been proven to be the maximum number of moves required for solving from any initial scrambled state.[34]

#907 "Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors." There is no evidence supporting the claim that dueling is legal in Paraguay and it has been reported that the U.S. Paraguayan consulate also says it isn't legal.[35]

#921 "If you had 1 billion dollars and spent 1 thousand dollars a day, it would take you 2,749 years to spend it all." If done correctly, simple math will show that it takes 2,738 years (counting leap years) to spend 1 billion dollars, not 2,749.

#975 "The letter J is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements." The letter "Q" also doesn't appear anywhere on the periodic table; this is a recent change, as Element 114 was recently renamed Flerovium.[36][37]

On February 13, 2012, Snapple was announced as the official beverage sponsor of America's Got Talent; Snapple products will be available for judges' consumption this season.[38] (The show's new judge, Howard Stern, was a spokesperson for Snapple in the 1980s.)

In 2007, Snapple opened the Snapple Theater Center on 50th Street and Broadway in the heart of New York City's Theater District. It has two theaters, one of which is a traditional theater, the other a thrust stage which can house plays. The center also includes a 40×50 ft rehearsal space which is available for rent. The theaters are considered Off-Broadway because of their low seating capacities.[40]